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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3779 for Thursday the 26th of January 2023.

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Today's show is entitled, just because you can do a thing.

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It is hosted by Tre and is about three minutes long.

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It carries a clean flag.

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The summary is, just because you can do a thing does that mean you should.

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Hello Hacker Public Radio fans, this is Tre and I'm throwing this recording together

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for several reasons.

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One, the queue of shows is a bismally sparse.

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There are far more openings for shows in the next few weeks than there are shows posted.

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And too, this show is a pitiful excuse for why I haven't posted any shows recently.

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If you like what you hear on Hacker Public Radio, please express your gratitude by recording

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your own show.

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If it doesn't need to be long or sound professional or anything, introduce yourself and share

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something you find interesting.

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If you do not like any or all of what you hear on Hacker Public Radio, then it is the perfect

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opportunity for you to take a few moments and record a short or long podcast of your

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own, which fills the gap of what you feel is needed on HPR.

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All right, enough preliminaries.

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A long time ago at an undisclosed university far, far away.

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I took my first class about ethics.

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One of the things I remember most was the question of, just because you can do a thing, does

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that mean you should do the thing?

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This was applied to many different scenarios.

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From nation states, building weapons of mass destruction to authoring computer viruses and

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even to saying what you're thinking at any given moment.

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It should quickly become obvious that you should not always do a thing simply because

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you can do it.

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And today, I would like to relate that to DIY home improvement projects, especially as

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we work our way up in years.

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For regular listeners, you may recall my series, everything you always wanted to know about

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pecks recorded and shared in May through July of 2022.

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These are episodes 36-04, 36-14, 36-24, and 36-34.

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In this series, I recounted the process of re-plumbing my home using pecks with helpful

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advice for anyone else who wants to try it.

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But I did not realize that the time I was doing the project was the toll that doing so much

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work overhead by myself was taking on my old shoulder joints.

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It was only one straw, but a rather significant one, which eventually broke the camel's

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back, or in my case, resulted in several severe tears in my rotator cuff and bicep tendon.

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Therapy was marginally effective and surgery was eventually required to put things back together

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the way they belonged.

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My effort to save money and do the project myself because I could, helped lead to significantly

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more expenses and more than a year of recovery.

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I'm not sharing this for sympathy, but rather because I learned something important.

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Now that I'm getting older, as I decide which projects I should do myself and which I should

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pay professionals to do, it is important to factor in the potential impact on my body,

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my mind, and those around me, even if all goes well.

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Just because you can do a thing does not necessarily mean you should do that thing.

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Unless the thing is recording a podcast for HPR, that is something you can and should

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do.

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You have been listening to hacker public radio as hacker public radio does work.

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Today's show was contributed by a HPR in this night like yourself, if you ever thought

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of recording a podcast, click on our contributally to find out how easy it means.

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Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by an onsthost.com, the internet archive and our

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Sync.net, on this otherwise status, today's show is released on our creative comments, attribution for pointo international license.